How to solve differential equation

Hi,

I have the following line of code:

clear all;
clc;

answer = dsolve('Da=-k1*a*(b^1.7)','Db=-k1*a*(b^1.7)', 'Dc=k1*a*(b^1.7)','a(0)=0.752','b(0)=1.278','c(0)=0');
answer.a

But when I run it, it returns with the following:

Warning: Unable to find explicit solution. 
> In dsolve (line 201)
  In API2_OldMethod (line 6) 
Dot indexing is not supported for variables of this type.

Error in sym/subsref (line 890)
            R_tilde = builtin('subsref',L_tilde,Idx);

Error in API2_OldMethod (line 7)
answer.a

Can anyone explain to me what I'm doing wrong? Can it be fixed? Thanks.

Answer 1

[Walter Roberson]

There is no closed form solution for those equations (not that MATLAB can find), so dsolve() is returning empty.

Maple cannot find closed form solutions either.